Horseradish peroxidase

Horseradish peroxidase
Horseradish peroxidase C1
Identifiers
Organism	Armoracia rusticana
Symbol	Peroxidase C1A
Alt. symbols	PRXC1A
PDB	1W4W More structures
UniProt	P00433
Other data
EC number	1.11.1.7

The enzyme horseradish peroxidase (HRP), found in the roots of horseradish, is used extensively in biochemistry applications. It is a metalloenzyme with many isoforms, of which the most studied type is C.

The structure of the enzyme was first solved by X-ray crystallography in 1997 and has since been solved several times with various substrates. It is an all alpha-helical protein which binds heme as a redox cofactor.

Alone, the HRP enzyme, or conjugates thereof, is of little value; its presence must be made visible using a substrate that, when oxidized by HRP using hydrogen peroxide as the oxidizing agent, yields a characteristic change that is detectable by spectrophotometric methods.

Numerous substrates for the horseradish peroxidase enzyme have been described and commercialized to exploit the desirable features of HRP. These substrates fall into several distinct categories. HRP catalyzes the conversion of chromogenic substrates (e.g., TMB, DAB, ABTS) into colored products, and produces light when acting on chemiluminescent substrates (e.g. Enhanced Chemiluminescence by luminol).

Horseradish peroxidase is a 44,173.9-dalton glycoprotein with 6 lysine residues which can be conjugated to a labeled molecule. It produces a coloured, fluorimetric, or luminescent derivative of the labeled molecule when incubated with a proper substrate, allowing it to be detected and quantified. HRP is often used in conjugates (molecules that have been joined genetically or chemically) to determine the presence of a molecular target. For example, an antibody conjugated to HRP may be used to detect a small amount of a specific protein in a western blot. Here, the antibody provides the specificity to locate the protein of interest, and the HRP enzyme, in the presence of a substrate, produces a detectable signal. Horseradish peroxidase is also commonly used in techniques such as ELISA and due to its monomeric nature and the ease with which it produces coloured products. Peroxidase, a heme-containing oxidoreductase, is a commercially important enzyme which catalyses the reductive cleavage of hydrogen peroxide by an electron donor.